Books: Preface to Shakespeare

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If the dramas of Shakespeare were to be characterised, each by the
particular excellence which distinguishes it from the rest, we must
allow to the tragedy of HAMLET the praise of variety. The incidents
are so numerous, that the argument of the play would make a long
tale. The scenes are interchangeably diversified with merriment and
solemnity; with merriment that includes judicious and instructive
observations, and solemnity, not strained by poetical violence above
the natural sentiments of man. New characters appear from time to
time in continual succession, exhibiting various forms of life and
particular modes of conversation. The pretended madness of HAMLET
causes much mirth, the mournful distraction of OPHELIA fills the
heart with tenderness, and every personage produces the effect
intended, from the apparition that in the first act chills the
blood with horror, to the fop in the last that exposes affectation
to just contempt.

The conduct is perhaps not wholly secure against objections. The
action is indeed for the most part in continual progression, but
there are some scenes which neither forward nor retard it. Of the
feigned madness of Hamlet there appears no adequate cause, for he
does nothing which he might not have done with the reputation of
sanity. He plays the madman most, when he treats Ophelia with so
much rudeness, which seems to be useless and wanton cruelty.

Hamlet is, through the whole play, rather an instrument than an
agent. After he has, by the stratagem of the play, convicted the
King, he makes no attempt to punish him, and his death is at last
effected by an incident which Hamlet has no part in producing.

The catastrophe is not very happily produced; the exchange of
weapons is rather an expedient of necessity, than a stroke of art.
A scheme might easily have been formed, to kill Hamlet with the
dagger, and Laertes with the bowl.

The poet is accused of having shewn little regard to poetical justice,
and may be charged with equal neglect of poetical probability.
The apparition left the regions of the dead to little purpose; the
revenge which he demands is not obtained but by the death of him
that was required to take it; and the gratification which would
arise from the destruction of an usurper and a murderer, is abated
by the untimely death of Ophelia, the young, the beautiful, the
harmless, and the pious.

OTHELLO

ACT V. SCENE vi. (v. ii. 63-5.)

Oh perjur'd woman! Thou dost stone my heart,
And mak'st me call, what I intent to do,
A murder, which I thought a sacrifice.

This line is difficult. Thou hast harden'd my heart, and makest
me kill thee with the rage of a MURDERER, when I thought to have
sacraficed thee to justice with the calmness of a priest striking
a victim.

It must not be omitted, that one of the elder quarto's reads, "Thou
dost stone THY heart:" which I suspect to be genuine. The meaning
then will be, thou forcest me to dismiss thee from the world in
the state of the murdered without preparation for death, when I
intended that thy punishment should have been "a sacrifice" atoning
for thy crime.

I am glad that I have ended my revisal of this dreadful scene. It
is not to be endured.

The beauties of this play impress themselves so strongly upon the
attention of the reader, that they can draw no aid from critical
illustration. The fiery openness of Othello, magnanimous, artless,
and credulous, boundless in his confidence, ardent in his affection,
inflexible in his resolution, and obdurate in his revenge; the cool
malignity of Iago, silent in his resentment, subtle in his designs,
and studious at once of his interest and his vengeance; the soft
simplicity of Desdemona, confident of merit, and conscious of
innocence, her artless perseverance in her suit, and her slowness
to suspect that she can be suspected, are such proofs of Shakespeare's
skill in human nature, as, I suppose, it is vain to seek in any
modern writer. The gradual progress which Iago makes in the Moor's
conviction, and the circumstances which he employs to inflame him,
are so artfully natural, that, though it will perhaps not be said
of him as he says of himself, that he is "a man not esily jealous,"
yet we cannot but pity him when at last we find him "perplexed in
the extreme."

There is always danger lest wickedness conjoined with abilities
should steal upon esteem, though it misses of approbation but the
character if Iago is so conducted, that he is from the first scene
to the last hated and despised.

Event he inferiour characters of this play would be very conspicuous
in any other piece, not only for their justness but their strength.
Cassio is brave, benevolent, and honest, ruined only by his want
of stubbornness to resist an insidious invitation of Rodegigo's
suspicious credulity, and impatient submission of the cheats which
he sees practised upon him, and which by persuasion he suffers to
be repeated, exhibit a strong picture of a weak mind betrayed by
unlawful desires, to a false friend and the virtue of AEmilia is
such as we often find, worn loosely but not cast off, easy to commit
small crimes, but quickend and alarmed at atrocious villanies.

The Scenes from the beginning to the end are busy, varied but happy
interchanges, and regularly promoting the progression of the story;
and the narrative in the end, though it tells but what is known
already, yet is necessary to produce the death of Othello.

Had the scene opened in Cyprus, and the preceding incidents been
occasionally related, there had been little wanting of a drama of the
most exact and scrupulous regularity.

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